Idler 61

Saturday, 16 June 1759.

By Samuel Johnson

[1] Mr. Minim had now advanced
himself to the zenith of critical reputation; when he was in the
pit, every eye in the boxes was fixed upon him, when he entered
his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of candidates, who
passed their noviciate of literature under his tuition; his
opinion was asked by all who had no opinion of their own, and yet
loved to debate and decide; and no composition was supposed to
pass in safety to posterity, till it had been secured by Minim's
approbation.

[2] Minim professes great admiration
of the wisdom and munificence by which the academies of the
continent were raised, and often wishes for some standard of
taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal from caprice,
prejudice, and malignity. He has formed a plan for an academy of
criticism, where every work of imagination may be read before it
is printed, and which shall authoritatively direct the theatres
what pieces to receive or reject, to exclude or to revive.

[3] Such an institution would, in
Dick's opinion, spread the fame of English literature over
Europe, and make London the metropolis of elegance and
politeness, the place to which the learned and ingenious of all
countries would repair for instruction and improvement, and where
nothing would any longer be applauded or endured that was not
conformed to the nicest rules, and finished with the highest
elegance.

[4] Till some happy conjunction of
the planets shall dispose our princes or ministers to make
themselves immortal by such an academy, Minim contents himself to
preside four nights in a week in a critical society selected by
himself, where he is heard without contradiction, and whence his
judgment is disseminated through the great vulgar and the
small.

[5] When he is placed in the chair of
criticism, he declares loudly for the noble simplicity of our
ancestors, in opposition to the petty refinements, and ornamental
luxuriance. Sometimes he is sunk in despair, and perceives false
delicacy daily gaining ground, and sometimes brightens his
countenance with a gleam of hope, and predicts the revival of the
true sublime. He then fulminates his loudest censures against the
monkish barbarity of rhyme; wonders how beings that pretend to
reason can be pleased with one line always ending like another;
tells how unjustly and unnaturally sense is sacrificed to sound;
how often the best thoughts are mangled by the necessity of
confining or extending them to the dimensions of a couplet; and
rejoices that genius has, in our days, shaken off the shackles
which had encumbered it so long. Yet he allows that rhyme may
sometimes be borne, if the lines be often broken, and the pauses
judiciously diversified.

[6] From blank verse he makes an easy
transition to Milton, whom he produces as an example of the slow
advance of lasting reputation. Milton is the only writer whose
books Minim can read for ever without weariness. What cause it is
that exempts this pleasure from satiety he has long and
diligently enquired, and believes it to consist in the perpetual
variation of the numbers, by which the ear is gratified and the
attention awakened. The lines that are commonly thought rugged
and unmusical, he conceives to have been written to temper the
melodious luxury of the rest, or to express things by a proper
cadence: for he scarcely finds a verse that has not this
favourite beauty; he declares that he could shiver in a hot-house
when he reads that

the ground
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire.

[7] And that when Milton bewails his
blindness, the verse

So thick a drop serene has quench'd these orbs,

has, he knows not how, something that strikes him with an
obscure sensation like that which he fancies would be felt from
the sound of darkness.

[8] Minim is not so confident of his
rules of judgment as not very eagerly to catch new light from the
name of the author. He is commonly so prudent as to spare those
whom he cannot resist, unless, as will sometimes happen, he finds
the publick combined against them. But a fresh pretender to fame
he is strongly inclined to censure, 'till his own honour requires
that he commend him. 'Till he knows the success of a composition,
he intrenches himself in general terms; there are some new
thoughts and beautiful passages, but there is likewise much which
he would have advised the author to expunge. He has several
favourite epithets, of which he has never settled the meaning,
but which are very commodiously applied to books which he has not
read, or cannot understand. One is "manly," another is "dry,"
another "stiff," and another "flimzy"; sometimes he discovers
delicacy of style, and sometimes meets with "strange
expressions."

[9] He is never so great, or so
happy, as when a youth of promising parts is brought to receive
his directions for the prosecution of his studies. He then puts
on a very serious air; he advises the pupil to read none but the
best authors, and, when he finds one congenial to his own mind,
to study his beauties, but avoid his faults, and, when he sits
down to write, to consider how his favourite author would think
at the present time on the present occasion. He exhorts him to
catch those moments when he finds his thoughts expanded and his
genius exalted, but to take care lest imagination hurry him
beyond the bounds of nature. He holds diligence the mother of
success, yet enjoins him, with great earnestness, not to read
more than he can digest, and not to confuse his mind by pursuing
studies of contrary tendencies. He tells him, that every man has
his genius, and that Cicero could never be a poet. The boy
retires illuminated, resolves to follow his genius, and to think
how Milton would have thought; and Minim feasts upon his own
beneficence till another day brings another pupil.